The present invention relates to an image processor, an important person determination method and an image layout method for determining an important person from among persons on images based on a plurality of image data and performing an image layout as well as a program and a recording medium for causing a computer to execute each procedure of the important person determination method or the image layout method.
An image product such as a photo book has heretofore been automatically created based on a plurality of image data stored in a storage of a cellular phone or a personal computer or in a flash memory of a digital camera or the like (see, for example, JP 2007-49387 A).
In general, automatic creation of an image product is convenient because a user does not have to select image data to be put on the image product from among a large quantity of image data and lay out the selected image data one by one.
Nevertheless, an image product that can be created does not necessarily provide a high level of satisfaction to the user. For example, as shown in FIG. 13, in automatic creation of an image product, images of a child of someone else may be mainly laid out in spite of the desire that images of his or her own child be mainly laid out, which may reduce user satisfaction with the automatically created image product.
JP 2007-49387 A proposes an image output device which detects face images from individual image data, calculates the degree of dominance of the face images as subjects, calculates the degree of importance of image data based on the degree of dominance and lays out based on the degree of importance.
In addition, JP 2006-244279 A discloses an invention of an image classifier which detects face images of persons from frame images of a motion picture and compares all the face images to classify the compared face images into face image groups corresponding to the respective persons, thereby presuming a person having the highest appearance frequency to be a main person.